Blizzcon Meetups and my Schedule

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Time’s winding down and I’m frantically trying to finalize everything. Guess who has exams on both sides of BlizzCon.

Yeah.

Meetups that I know about

Anyway, here’s the list of meetups that are going on which I’ll be crashing attending.

Thursday 21/10/10

7:00 PM – WoW Insider BlizzCon Reader Meetup

Where: The patio near the poolside of the Anabella hotel
When: Thursday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.
What: Mingling, toasts, guest stars, joy

I need to get a picture with Nog.

Yeah. That Nog.

Friday 22/10/10

9:00 PM – Twisted Nether meetup

When: Friday, Oct 22, 2010 9:00pm
Where: Bubba Gump Shrimp (head to the bar if you see no signs outside)

9:00 PM – Raid Warning Live Show meetup

When: Friday, October 22nd, 2010. 9PM – 1AM
Where: Dave and Busters: The Block at Orange 20 City Blvd. G, Suite 1
Space for TWO HUNDRED people!

My schedule

I’m trying to plan out my itinerary. Something tells me I’m not exactly going to stick to it.

Thursday

11:11 AM – Land in LA
11:15 AM – Clear customs (Hopefully).
11:45 AM – Meet up with guildies and get carried picked up
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch! (Perhaps In and Out as I resolve to have it at least once while I’m here)
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Drop stuff off at the hotel. Buy some beer. Maybe nap.
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM – Lineup for tickets.
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM – Nap some more.
6:00 PM – 11:00 PM – WoW Insider meetup! Worried about what stunt my guildies will pull. They randomly chanted “Matticus!” last year during the meetup. The team was confused and had “WTF” looks. I had no idea it was them until they told me.
11:00 PM – 1:00 AM – Poker with the guildies.

Friday

6:30 AM – Wake up, shower, coffee x 3
6:45 AM – Breakfast. More coffee.
8:00 AM – Lineup to enter BlizzCon.
10:00 AM – Actually enter BlizzCon, ninja seats for opening ceremony.
11:00 AM – Wander around, and then camp seats for Dungeons and Raids panel, camp seats for Quest and Lore, then check out various demos and cool stuff.
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM – Dinner! Maaaaybe with the guildies? If they behave. And not embarrass me.
9:00 PM – 9:30 PM – Check in with Twisted Nether folks and say hi!
9:30 PM – 12:00 AM – Raid Warning meetup next. (I went to the Twisted Nether meet last year)
12:00 AM – 1:00 AM – Rock Band party in our hotel room

Saturday

6:30 AM – Wake up, shower, coffee x 3
6:45 AM – Breakfast. More coffee.
7:00 AM – 9:00 AM – Blog for a while, relax for a bit.
10:00 AM – Enter BlizzCon, check out more demos (TCG and the magazine areas)
11:30 AM – 2:30 PM – Class Q&A, Open Q&A

That’s all I got planned for now. Probably going to go out the window. I better make sure I sleep with 1 eye open. I have a feeling I might get sharpied.

[VIDEO] Omnitron Defense System

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Here’s a video of the kill I was a part of when we took down the Omnitron Defense System during Sunday. Special thanks to Blacksen and his guild for allowing me to participate. I wasn’t actually healing at all on this fight. I’m the elemental shaman that’s throwing lightning bolts. It’s a hectic encounter and there is so much stuff going on. Three healers were used for 10 man. It’s a good indication of what to expect.

Read my writeup on WoW Insider (It should be up sometime around 6:00 AM PST, Tuesday morning)

Holy Word: Sanctuary vs Efflorescence

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I love using Holy Word: Sanctuary on players in melee only to find that the Efflorescence from druids already beat me to it. Both effects can easily be stacked on top of each other for extra AoE healing. Great times for this would be on Blood Queen or on Festergut, for example.

On the other hand, I’ve found that it can be a redundant AoE overheal especially when the affected players aren’t taking that much damage. As a priest, I can place a Sanctuary down wherever I like. A druid can just about do the same, but the flowerbed only appears beneath the target of their heal.

Already in raids, I’ve been in situations like this:

eff-vs-sanc

Blue dots represent players. The large, transparent circles represent the area of the AoE healing effects. A well placed Sanctuary can cover players standing far from each other but Efflorescence is limited to the target’s location. Has anyone else seen cases similar to this? I just find it funny in a sense. Come on guys! Recognize that these circles are good things to stand in! As a guideline, I think druids have melee players covered. Holy priests can park Sanctuary on range if the melee isn’t in need of it. Thinking ahead to Sindragosa for tonight, I have a feeling we’ll be stacking these for players at melee range.

Side note, I participated in beta tests for Blackwing Descent and Bastion of twilight on sunday. They’ll be appearing on WoW Insider sometime soon. Great encounters, Omnitron especially. Blizzard has not shown any signs of lacking any raiding creativity yet. Lots of promise for us raiders.

More on the Power Word: Barrier Glyph

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Disc priests, how has your experience with Power Word: Barrier been so far? If you have been engaging i raids, you might discover that the Barrier seems to simply fall over and crash upon absorbing a large hit spread out over multiple people. At least it is doing the job of prevention and absorption. If there is no damage flying around, it lasts for 25 seconds tops.

But did you see the glyph for Power Word: Barrier?

Increases the healing received while under the barrier by 10%.

Assuming you utilize the prime glyph, this begs the question.

If the barrier only lasts a couple of seconds, then the glyph will be of little to no use. This begs the question. Is it better to deploy the massive shield in anticipation of a big hit? Or is it better to top everyone off, allow the big raid ability connect, and then put up the shield to help accelerate the healing process somewhat.

On the other hand, the barrier is meant to absorb damage. Doesn’t that go against the spec? If we simply let the big damage attacks go through and then healing right afterwards, we’re not using our full skills.

I guess this means there are two variables to figure out:

The maximum amount of damage people will take under the bubble versus the actual healing that would be delivered with the 10% increase.

I’m not quite sure if this would affect anything in my healing plays. I can see myself calling for a barrier after a big hit. That is largely to help accelerate the healing and to get everyone back in the green. It seems to me though that barrier already has a “cap” in place in the amount of damage it absorbs. But with the glyph, anyone under the barrier gets extra healing done on them. The only way that will wear off is if the barrier disappears due to time elapsed or if it breaks from absorbing too much damage. In fact, it is very possible that a doctor can take pictures that fast.

More stuff to get used to, sadly.

4.0.1 shaman glyphs and an Ode to Sentry Totem

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Sentry totem is gone. Too often those who love us and hold us dear go before their time =(. Seriously though I already miss sentry totem. I did use it for a few things, like disarming bombs in SoTA. My recent grief over the loss of my beloved companion sparked the idea of composing an epic poem to commemorate its passing. Special thanks to @ianbroadfo for the inspiration on this one, and William Blake for composing the original.

Totem! Totem! sitting tight;
in the flag-room, on the right.
What designer’s hand or eye;
dare remove you from my UI?

In what distant Aerie Peaks,
What found on weathered wing and beak?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize desire?

And what purpose misunderstood.
Could twist the grains of thy wood?
And when thy eye began to seek,
What dread loss, this feeling bleak?

What the stone work? what the gain?
In what forge was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread light?
Do steal this purposeful insight?

When the Titans threw down their blaze,
And blinded heaven with their gaze,
Did they smile, this lost to naught?
Did they who made the totem wrought?

Totem! Totem! sitting tight;
in the flag-room, on the right.
What designer’s hand or eye;
dare remove you from my UI?

So yes, I will miss sentry totem. That little bugger was actually pretty useful. With the new patch, not only did Sentry Totem go away, but we got a bunch of new glyphs and a new glyph system. Check out Matt’s post on the the new system and priest glyphs for the run down. So what do shaman glyphs look like after the patch? Let’s take a look!

Prime Glyphs

Prime glyphs are the ones that give you the most improvement to your specialization.

Those are the prime glyphs you’re likely to be interested in. The restoration ones are pretty self explanatory, but you’re likely asking; “But Joe, why is Shocking and Lightning bolt on the list” ? Easy answer, because of Focused Insight and Telluric Currents. Let’s face it, if you get to a point where you out-gear a fight, you’re likely  throwing around some DPS to help out. At this late in the current expansion, unless you are a fresh 80, you’re likely to have content that you out-gear. Whether it is a heroic or a raid, these may be choices for you depending on what you’re doing. The most common setup I’m seeing among resto shaman is Earth Shield, Riptide (which just makes the spell ridiculously efficient) and Earthliving Weapon. Plan to move one of them to Water Mastery when Cataclysm drops, but until then mana isn’t an issue.

Major Glyphs

They augment your abilities, but not a large degree as prime glyphs.

Some interesting options here. Grounding Totem is in the list simply because there are a surprising number of boss abilities in heroics and raid that can absorbed by grounding totem. The fun of the glyph is that it makes it into a spell reflect. Nothing says I love you like throwing a fireball back from where-which-it-came-from. Hex is on the list because, well, we have a CC and its awesome. If you find yourself using Hex a lot *cough*heroicladydeathwhisper*cough*, this may be a good choice for you. Frost Shock is on the list again because of FI. Most common setup I’m seeing throughout the resto community is Chain Heal, Healing Stream Totem and Healing Wave. When Cataclysm goes live, you may want to swap one out for Totemic Recall just for mana conservation purposes.

I have to be honest, out of all the glyphs we got, I like the Healing Stream Totem one the best. I mean, I’ve always been a fan of HST, even before it was the cool-kids thing to do. The fact that it can add a series of resists is just beastly. It heals, it provides resist auras, it’s like a pocket paladin but with less QQ (I kid, I kid!).  With about every fight now having some form of elemental damage, there’s no reason not to have this glyph.

Minor Glyphs

These have little impact on your chosen role.

Basic stuff really, removal of reagent needs, and a shortening of our character class hearth cooldown. The new kid on the block though is Arctic Wolf. This turns your Ghost Wolf into a ghostly version of the winter wolves found throughout Azeroth. This glyph was originally slated to be released in Wrath alongside another glyph that allowed you to transform into a black wolf. They were scrapped before release, but at least one has found its way back. This is important for two reasons. One, it marks the inclusion of fun flavor items to help personalize your character. Two, it just looks cool!

Glyphs are becoming more about personal choice rather than what is best, which quite honestly is how it should be.

How has your patch 4.0.1 experience been so far? What do you love? What do you hate? Do you miss Sentry Totem too?